I Made A Video About How Stupid Movie Practices And Product Placement Lead To Nightmare Sonic. Give Me

Like a breath

Raising her head skyward in frustration, her eyes glide over a choppy, crystalline sea. The only sky the Forager has ever known, as if the air itself ruptures into a tumultuous gray just above the mountains. With her limited understanding of the world, she used to assume the atmosphere a physical thing, that thinned out as it approached the ground. Up there, she figured, the air was like a mighty ocean.

Sighing, she digs her hands back into the muck below. A thick, shapeless assembly of dirt and clay – all that remains of whatever structure once stood here. However old this building was, and whatever import it held, to her it was merely something to be dredged. An unspecific mass incarnadine, to be hopefully panned for gold.

The cracks along the ground were filled with this rubbish; great splinters through the earth at the bottom of unimaginable gorges, into which all the works of civilization came tumbling down into. A single split like this had the potential to contain centuries of progress – countless artifacts and trinkets, buried within the rubble. Their individuality now faded, together they lie as a great amalgamation, and a monument to inevitability. If she were to grab hold of something – some old keepsake or remain – it may well be all the we would ever see of a certain snapshot in time. To the Forager, it meant an exchange and a meal.

Indeed, it is hard to say how many priceless heirlooms and invaluable relics she had herself broken in search of a more easily quantifiable trade.

One false step and she herself could be swallowed by antiquity.

To say the history of the objects she held in her hands had ever crossed her mind would be a half-truth – a lie to flatter the ghosts of whatever world she trudged through. Only the immediate past of a given object – how pristine it appeared – ever factored into her thought process. After all, “worth”, and especially human worth, is an invention. Despite lofty connotations, the scrap she neatly folded and tucked away now carried with it a newer, more objective value than what previous generations might deem it to have.

With an ache of pain, the forager arcs her neck skyward. Long before her time, vainglorious scholars waxed poetic about the idea of the convergence. In the now, the reality, the word had lost it's meaning. She had never known her celestial body as a singular identity – only as a part of the twisted amalgamation. Everything had been drawn inwards, you see. As the universe drew ever closer to its inevitable conclusion, it's satellites and travelers were dragged towards its center. It was like a great homecoming, in a sense. Every atom was called home, to be reunited in their single point of origin. In time, it would all be crushed together – every star and every world. There would be a great unification before the end. Out with creation, and in with destruction. Like no more than a breath, with another perhaps to follow.

But for now, and for another trillion years, this will be the shape of things. A tumorous mass, growing larger by the century, and then shrinking into nothingness.

And all sentience throughout all time would amount to - this final stage of evolution – is rats on a ship. Hungry and cold, rummaging through the trash of their forbears.

With her head held high, the foragers eyes glaze over the continent of another planet. Her peers, also raising their heads, might look at her own. It gave her solace, before she got back to work, imagining that she herself was to others a similar, tumultuous sky.

What is a Script Consultant - and do you need one!

This is part of a new series in which I reveal my ugly mug and give writing advice, talking about my experience as a Script Consultant and work on reading and editing screenplays.

If anyone has any thoughts, questions or suggestions please do let me know! Would love to have some feedback on this series, and know what people might be interested in me covering in the future.

Infra - sub, or below

Naut - to sail, though in recent years it has become intrinsically tied to space. See; astronaut, cosmonaut.

ok so i generally don't find guys attractive but you cute 👌🏼👀

As a long-decaying malevolent skeleton I don’t hear that much, so thanks

I am new to your account, and I would like to ask, what are you? I mean, a writer, a YouTuber, it seems like.

Two small skeletons in a robe pretending to be a big skeleton

Tried my hand at a Gaster battle. I haven’t seen much art embracing his whole shtick of being a lost/deleted/corrupted file. I think something like this is more in line with what Toby would give us in terms of an actual encounter with him.

Is it insecurity or ego which drives men to so ferociously want to uncomplicate complicated women?

Rolling

I always enjoyed the sound of the projector clicking and sputtering to life.

I work in an arthouse cinema. We show oldies and obscure flicks. A lot of what some people would call “classics” mixed with trash to appease the ironic, younger crowd. Personally I think if a movie is bad you shouldn't watch it, and if it's old... Well, older movies always me uneasy. I never liked seeing moving, colourless faces. The more faded and grainy the film the sicker it made me. Like I said, I'm not really a movie buff.

We do have them though. I've found that people can summon the most passionate responses to anything, especially things you don't understand. The cinema is small, but always full of people and rhetoric, a bustling hipster exchange where it's hard to even finish a thought.

Every night but Thursday. Thursday, at eight o'clock, the places is vacated. Completely empty except for me, and our patron. I never speak to the guy – I don't ever even see him, but he's worked something out with the manager. Every week on Thursday, eight o'clock, he has the place to himself, and he watches “his movie”. If it weren't on film, he wouldn't even need me there.

There's an uncanny aspect to these old movies that extends beyond the sound and visuals. We're the first people on Earth to be able to see these long-dead, moving faces. Have you ever considered that? For all of human history, when someone was dead, they were still. An image or a painting. That's not true for us anymore.

Though the people on the screen remain youthful, the stock expires and becomes grainy. I always felt like it's as if the film itself is trying to break the illusion of immortality we've granted these characters. The projector reassures us – it provides us with a distraction from our dissatisfaction whilst also allowing us to pretend for a while. We laugh at those zombies up there, and by doing so breathe life back into them, and into the audiences decades ago. The same feelings – things are alive.

The film itself, though? That's another matter. That's an impermanent, physical, fleshy thing that ages and dies just like us. It breaks the spell. Call me nihilistic, but I think the movement to abandon the medium in favour of  digital is laced with the sad tinge of denial. We need to preserve our idols, and in doing so, ourselves. When I watch those young-but-weathered faces up there, all I can think about is denial. How much of what I do, day to day, comes down to denying mortality? I don't know about you, but I feel it's... Something you can only ever not think about. It's not something to conquer. Maybe watching the screen so long has opened my eyes to it, but I think film is too honest to survive.

He needs me, you see, because it's on film. Maybe you've never seen anything on film before, but if you have you may have noticed a black oval appearing in the upper-right hand corner of the frame from time to time. That's a cue mark – it's meant to signal to me, the person running the projector, that it's time to change reels. I'm no good with just remembering or timing it, so I have to pay attention. I've seen this movie... Maybe a hundred times. It makes me afraid.

It's avant-garde. Or maybe dada? I'm not a humanities major, so I couldn't tell you, but it's... unsettling. There's no title card, and there are no end credits. Maybe the film itself isn't what gets to me, so much as that man's devotion to it. How can anyone care so much about something – about one, specific thing? How can anyone ever dedicate themselves like that? I wonder what's stranger... If he sits down there, eyes glazed over, in a routine, or if... He's down there, feeling it all. Feeling the things he felt before, again and again. That scares me.

Time to change over. Sounds and shapes I can hear in my room. Images that project on the back of my eyelids and echo through the halls of my apartment. They mean so much to that man, but to me they're abstract uneasiness, and they follow me home.

Sometimes I feel like my life is one long lead-up to a jump scare. The sinking and uncertain feeling that it could be coming any minute now. Now could be the moment when it – whatever it is – happens. I let my mind wander. I try not to pay attention when I don't have to.

Am I on the screen, am I in the audience, or am I up here, waiting to transition?

Cue mark. I reach out to change reels but there's nothing there. I look down, and my hands look old.

Castles in the Air, Episode Two: Jamais Vu

Castles in the Air is a bi-weekly horror anthology series in the vein of The Twilight Zone. The podcast is created and owned by Will Donelson.

A couple sit together in a diner, passing the time with cheap conversation. A car outside drives by one too many times, and the two sat behind them seem to be repeating themselves. Something is clearly wrong, and despite how much they want to leave, something is keeping them glued in place. As time itself unwinds, loops and rearranges around them, they find themselves questioning their very reasons for being.

Written, directed and edited by Will Donelson

Please Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/castles-in-the-air/id1191981068

Stream on Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/castles-in-the-air/e/48846067?autoplay=true

Stream on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/will-donelson-1/castles-in-the-air-episdode-two-jamais-vu

RSS: http://castlesintheair.libsyn.com/rss

This episode features voicework by Jane Duncan and John Skaggs. This episode features additional voicework by David Milk and Paul Cipparone.

Music used:

"Humility" by Mangokitty, check them out at vickisigh.tumblr.com

Opening theme is "Consumed by Love" by Giles Appleton

Episode art by Will Donelson

If you like what you heard, please subscribe to us on iTunes! I would also appreciate any ratings/reviews on iTunes as it helps boost the shows visibility.

Once again, thank you to everyone for being so supportive and sending so many nice messages and the like. Next episode in two weeks!

Annihilation

0.0001 multiplied by the speed of light squared is 9 trillion.

Or, 100mg worth of matter and antimatter multiplied by 3x10^8 squared gives you 9000000000000 joules of energy. Specifically, this is referred to as Annihilation energy.

0.0001 kg would provide the equivalent of 14.28 % of the energy in the Hiroshima atomic bomb. 

The average weight of two human bodies is 124kg.